2008 Prompt Series
by kurushi
Summary: A series of Laby one-shot prompts from Only Forever LJ . Mostly Sarah/Jareth. I would love feedback on any of these.
1. Fairy tales cannot fool me now

_Disclaimer for all chapters: __All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. _

_Author's Note: Answer to the March 2008 Only_Forever LJ prompt, and my first response. Also posted in 2008 at Underground, a Labyrinth fic archive._

**Fairy Tales Cannot Fool Me Now**

It started that very next morning. It was a weekend; we drove to the local shops and the "adults" flirted and bought groceries. I sat with Toby in the park, thinking about dreams, reality, and the lines between them. Toby made fists in the grass, and found something incredibly hilarious about the universe. I found myself wishing that I'd been the infant wished away; that I'd been able to see all those beautiful colours, hear all those interesting sounds, smell all the awful goblins and the sweet flowers, without knowing what they were; I wished I was able to experience without judging or questioning, or being lost in the Big Picture.

He looked at me, suddenly, solemnly, and I stared back. Did he remember it? Did anything happen at all, or did I fall asleep on my bed? I was beginning to doubt my experience, doubt myself, when I heard another child crying and I felt myself drawn to look.

Yes, over there. Near the fountain. A young woman sat, despondently smoking in dirty clothes, eyes darkened shadows in her skeletal frame. A small ratty pram was rolling back and forth in the wind beside her, and she was paying it no heed. The child was cold, I assumed, or lonely, or had just soiled itself. For whatever reason, the kid just cried and cried, its' poor heart broken by whatever was happening. The mother just smoke, and stared at the pavement dully. I tensed my legs to stand, to go over and help it, pick it up and make sure it wasn't ill.

And then I saw it. Toby exclaimed, and I'm sure he saw it too. We froze silently and watched as a small mote approached the baby. It was fairy sized, but – from what my squint could make out – much more golden and well dressed than the fairies I'd been bitten by. I would have stood, at least I like to think I would, to swat the thing away, but then a young man of about eight or nine years old came tiptoe-ing up. He was wearing ragged old clothes that had been patched by a clumsy hand, and as he moved I could see a light sparkle of glitter in the mess that it was. His hair was sticking up in all directions, but jauntily so. Not forced with gel, this hair. It was simply hair that, like its' owner, defied everything and everyone.

He stared openly, brazenly, into the pram for quite some time, as if he was assessing the child. Then, with a proud grin and an emphatic nod, the boy straightened, and crowed. Nobody else in the park seemed to notice, but I heard it, and saw the golden fairy move inwards. She rained gold dust down all over the child, and then the boy made a silly face. The child giggled, and was lifted up by one hand. Leading it like a dance partner, the boy pulled and whirled around slowly, the baby floating in the air as if it were swimming. They smiled at each other for a few moments in the air, just hanging there, and then the young boy looked over at Toby and me. He laughed, and leant to whisper something to the fairy, and finally took true flight with a smug wink.

Toby stretched his arm out after them, crying out. I held him close, until he calmed down, and whispered to him. I knew where they were going; second star to the left, as it goes.

I didn't see anything for over a week after that. I began to doubt, again, my experience. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I dreamt my conversations with my new friends, because I _could_ only have them at night. So I hummed and hawwed and drifted through school. I babysat Toby, and read books and cleaned up some of the lace from my room.

It was a Thursday, at lunch time. A girl from my class was being bullied by someone or something, and I was drawn to defend her. After all, I've been the brunt of way too many things like that, myself. We sat in a dark corner together, alone. She told me all about her life, but not her name. She said she was going to run away soon, and it'd be better if I didn't know. But she'd been left with her stepmother and two stepsisters when her father died.

It was then that I began to feel a stirring of suspicion within my gut.

They had run out of his money, and the woman had been too proud to try for any benefits, so they'd sat around making the most of things. The electrical bill hadn't been paid, and as they sat there in the dark, staring glumly in the dark, they'd decided to send her, as the youngest, cutest, to try and borrow a candle or something from a neighbour.

She'd tied back her golden hair, and dressed up as warmly as she could, and left the house promising to bring it back.

"They were real bitches, that night," the girl said, "But they weren't always. We were all just hungry, and tired, and fed up with it all."

So she'd tried the house next door, with an old woman. She had seemed nice and friendly at first, but when the girl had arrived she'd turned into a real, to quote the girl, "Baba Yaga". Forced the poor thing into a claw-footed bathtub, scrubbed her raw, and contacted social services.

Then, the old hag had somehow argued her way into fostering the girl. Not for any kindness, but to have another hand around the house, to have a cook, cleaner, tailor.

The girl was frightened, and lonely. All she had left of her family was her doll, which had almost been taken by the boys.

"They saw her talking to me, you see," the doll explained to me in a very sensical and responsible voice. "And they called her a crazy. I feel very stupid for tripping up like that in public, but we're so tired trying to arrange this escape. We have to time it properly, or we'll just get thrown back in there."

I just held her close, and told her about my mother, and we cried the two of us. But the doll caught her tears, and swallowed them all up.

It broke my heart to leave them, but I'd read enough to know that things would right themselves.

Poor, poor, Vasilisa.

You can see them everywhere, if you look hard enough. I've learnt to stop training myself to focus inwards, like most good adults. You have to look up, and around, and beyond. You have to listen, and smell, and see, really see.

It's quite obvious, really. Maybe easier for me than for others; all I have to do is call. But you can see them, if you know that you can. That's their trick, how they get away with what they do. I won't let them fool me again, though, oh no. See? Over there, the busker? What do you see, in the man with the pipes?

I'm sure as hell not fooled.


	2. The man with thistledown hair

_Author's Notes: Answer to the April 2008 Only_Forever LJ prompt, and my first response. Also posted in 2008 at Underground, a Labyrinth fic archive._

_IMPORTANT! Notes on the setting – this is a crossover between Labyrinth fanverse, canon, The Eyre Affair series by Jasper Fforde, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke._

_Within the Eyre Affair series, for those who have not read it, a library exists within which all books that exist are shelved. Characters can travel between books, and sometimes go on exchange or respite programs. The Librarian communicates with characters by footnoterphone (footnotes), or other academic referencing forms. The Well of Lost Plots is where incomplete and unpublished books languish. The organisation that polices rogue characters (who have escaped their allocated narratives) is known as Jurisfiction. The IT lab of Fandom is (in my mind) a wholly expected but less tasteful element of the all-encompassing library of fiction in this universe, it has not appeared in Fforde's books. _

**The Man with Thistle-Down Hair**

The man with thistle-down hair, defeated, returned to that chair, that window. He didn't know why, in his heart. He'd travelled so far to get away from it all, there seemed to be no reason to return.

To the room of sandstone walls and floors, of doors and windows that were never shut, because there was never any wood, no glass.

To the godforsaken twilight skies, and the hordes of childlike goblins. Somewhere out there, in the Labyrinth, _she_ was there. She walked in the mazes, as always, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered. He found himself wondering if there was a dance, at that moment. If she was there, her dark hair fuzzy, or straight, or black, or brown, or dyed blonde...

If she was wearing green, for her eyes, or purple, or pink, or red. It always changed, and he'd been swapped in and out of so many of these things that he never remembered which one he'd originally come from.

But right now, thanks to the intertextual exchange program, and the kindness of Jurisfiction, there was someone else wearing the awful lycra breeches and smiling at the girl's face. Because the last man with thistle down hair had become bored, with so much time on his hands and so little actual narrative visibility, and because he, the current one, had felt sick of wearing tights and seducing those women over and over again, only to fade to black.

In _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_, he had the time and space to walk about in London. To spit, to whore about, to eat a steak, to drink a beer.

To sleep, and have it not contain dreams of unbridled lust. To wake up, piss, and fart, and sit there staring glumly at a slice of toast instead of moping, attacking, or sitting at prim Royal Feasts of American breakfast food.

It was wonderful, just the break he'd wanted! And he'd escaped from The Hellhole. That was what they called it, in the rest of the library. The Well of Lost Plots was even better than the limbo that he had been cast into. The IT Lab of Fandom, it was called, but not even capitalised on the plaque. The plaque was a laminated piece of plastic with printed paper inside. The Chesire cat had thought that sufficient for the nature of the place.

He had, of couse, as head librarian, only deigned to create it to prevent the Well and the Library itself from being over populated with shit narrative, poorly muddled and messed up metaphors, and all of the new characters that the trainee characters were turning into. Into Mary Sues.

Which was why he, one of the many Jareths, one of the "Bowies" as they were called by characters of _real _books, had applied for the mercy program. The character exchange, with the man with thistle-down hair. Who was bored and wanted some action.

There was probably a dance, there was always a dance. The man with thistle-down hair was dancing with her. With a Mary Sue, probably. But maybe, just maybe, with Sarah.

And the possibility that maybe, this time, like all those other times, until the girl showed up, it _could_ be Sarah. Until she entered the room. But it would never be Sarah, not for him. There were too many Bowies, and too many Mary Sues. There would never be any Sarah, not for him.

Someone else, luck of the draw, had gotten himself a Sarah. A whole heap of them had, but not him. It had never been him.

But the thought that the thistle-down man could, against all odds, be out there, and take Sarah into his arms, smell her human body-warm soft hair, touch the inside of her wrist, it was hideous. In the last month of his first cycling through _Jonathan Strange & etc_, he'd been driven mad with jealousy. Because it only took a few moments, sometimes, for a reading of fanfiction. How many hundreds of times could the man have found, seduced, loved, _Jareth's _Sarah?

Jareth, the current man with thistle down hair, sat in his old chair and stared out at the twilight. He sighed, because he knew deep down that it wouldn't last, this crazy jealous hope. Probably in a few moments, just before his second time through _Jonathon Strange_, the real man with thistle-down hair would change his mind and say "You know, I'm sick of all this. I want to go home, already. Screw the program."

And there would be no hope, not really. No jealousy, because there was never, had never, been anyone to feel jealousy over. Just a hundred faceless girls who cycled through like butterflies, in dresses of all colours, all ages. In love for a moment before they, too, left.

Always romance, but never love. Always winter, but never Christmas. He started, and wondered where that line had come from. Perhaps living in a book in the real library meant that instead of Mary Sues bleeding from one fic to the next, real literature, _real _literature, was seeping into his existence.

But where was it from? He had no idea, and was turning to jump back into the Library when

"_Stay where you are, and keep quiet, I don't have much time. I can't use the footnoter phones, and this keyboard is hell on my paws. I wish that there was a better way than Harvard. We have a situation, in the Library. Someone's pushed through the walls, from the real world. Not even from Thursday Next's world, but the real, human, readership, world._

"_I have to keep this short, but find somewhere devoid of narrative, a dark corner that I can't see, for ten mintues, and I'll get back to you. You've been promoted, from fictional character on exchange up to the lowest level of Jurisfiction. That'll give you more access to things, and mobility. I have to go now, he's taken most of us hostage, everyone whose ever been in a book, he's got a_

(The Chesire Cat, Librarian, 1999)

Accepting without a word, Jareth turned and left the room. He returned ten minutes later, from unknown places. Although written after the event, it was considered safer to allow for a complete absence of narrative. He thought over the events as he watched the bubbles rise from the dance in the Labyrinth. The Cat was hardly ever out of control. Not like this, at least. He begged food, and treats, but never this. And to abandon the footnoterphone and subject his paws to the punishment typing out by the Harvard reference protocols implied a very dire situation indeed.

So someone was in the library, taking books hostage. Was it, perhaps, Acheron Hades or one of his family? Stories of their attempts to hold power over literature were legendary throughout all the Library, even the IT labs. And what had the culprit got? A what? He sat still, and waited for quite some time for more information from the Cat. He watched the romance cycle to the fade-to-black stage, and start again. The man with thistle down hair appeared confused, but waved a greeting and moved on. Perhaps he saw the consternation that was plaguing Jareth.

After half of another run-through, Jareth gave up. If he didn't act now, there would be no hope for anyone. If she, whoever she was, had a, whatever it was, and the Cat was no longer talking, it was Jareth and Jareth alone who could do anything to help. He quickly grabbed a weapon; there were always glamorous rapiers lying around in the Labyrinth. Then he gingerly stepped out, not into the book again, but into the IT lab itself.

Standing and looking at the text on the buzzing screens, he felt strange. It was very impersonal and synthetic compared to the lovely weight and solemnitude of the Library books themselves. When he had first been there, he had run his fingertips all over their spines, exalting in the sensation.

But here, he would no sooner run his fingers over the screens than he would stab the sword he carried into his own foot. Silently, for as a fandom Goblin King he was highly stealthy, not to mention handsome and witty, he stole up the stairs.

Halfway up he realised that the awful descriptions of fanfiction had caught up with him, and he shuddered and waited a moment for the words to fade away in his mind. Or, perhaps, could retaining the illogical and exaggerated characteristics give him an edge against the intruder? Was this why he'd been the one the Cat had contacted? Perfectly placed, not in any narrative of his own at the moment, with the reality of a novel and the surreality of fanfiction?

Emboldened by these thoughts, he pressed silently onwards, towards the security doors that led into the Library.

There was nobody there, at the immigration station. No-one to stop the Mary Sues and multitudinous carbon copies of characters from books and film from storming into the Library and causing chaos.

He knelt beneath the desk and peered around to see through the glass door. There was a young boy standing there, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old. He was holding a book, a very familiar book, in one hand. In the other was an electric cigarette lighter. Jareth recognised it because he had once hosted a Mary Sue who had smoked.

He couldn't make out the cover, not quite yet. But there was just _something _about the cover that was horrifyingly familiar.

"I mean it!" The kid yelled, he glared at the library workers, the Cat, and the members of Jurisfiction who were all, surprisingly, sitting still.

"I mean it!! If you don't hand him over to me, then I'll burn the lot of you!"

Jareth crept closer behind the cover of a trolley, slowly, quietly, until he could read the title of the book as the boy waved it again.

What he saw made his stomach roil, and he felt so shocked and faint that he could feel his blood flow slow in his veins, drawing his strength and hope away.

_The Eyre Affair_, by Jasper Fforde. This wasn't just any book, this was _their _book. The book of their existence. The first edition, carefully slotted away in a corner.

Oh, but the boy had done his research. If he wasn't threatening the life that Jareth knew, Jareth would have applauded his genius. But how, he wondered, had a boy that age gotten the idea into his head?

It wasn't a very round or large head, to be sure, but oh, fuck, it was very familiar. Fearing another awful revalation, Jareth simply sat back behind the trolley and tried to feel a little less shaky. His sword felt suddenly flimsy and pointless against the damage that that one flame could do.

"Let me re-iterate!" The boy commanded, staring evenly at his hostages.

"If you do not produce the Goblin King, I will burn you, and everything here!"

Oh, now? What on earth was that about? Jareth re-assessed the situation, and turned again to watch the boy, his sword discarded. There was something about those eyes...

Jareth realised he was over thinking things, and that nothing good could come of waiting. He stood, and cleared his throat, drawing the attention of all the assembled.

"Ah, you do realise, precocious child, that if you are looking for a goblin king here, and if here is in the book, and you burn the book, you destroy any subsequent chances you might have had to capture him?"

The boy frowned, and stared at him,

"Who are you? Sit down with the other hostages!"

"I'm... the man with thistle-down hair. Who are you?"

"Sit down, I said!"

Jareth pretended to consider it, rubbing his chin.

"Well, if I sit down, then all you have here is hostages, and no-one who is able to stand and fulfil your demands. So I'd better stay around here, just in case you really want something other than to ignite the room that you are standing in."

He walked closer, trying not to look at the book.

"And why do you want a goblin king, anyway? And why should we hand over a fictional character to your world without even knowing your name?"

He frowned and stared at Jareth, thinking, stuck for a moment. His hand didn't seem to be as tight on the book. Jareth was thinking of grabbing it, and the boy's mouth was opening, he was saying,

"My name is..."

When a sharp voice cut through the air, and it was so familiar and so impossibly real that for a moment Jareth thought he had just imagined it. It was just another of his dreams, intruding at a very inopportune time. But then everyone else reacted, and time seemed to slow, reorder itself, and speed up again.

"TOBY!"

"Shit, Sarah, I can explain, I..."

"YOU!"

Her first shout was indignant, the voice of an older sister. Her second one was enraged, the shriek of a harpy. She seemed to draw upon the dramatic energy of the Library around herself, and throw it all through her voice and eyes straight at his chest. It hit him like a blow, and he could just choke out, weakly,

"Sarah?"

Before Toby, for whatever reason, extinguished his lighter, and sheepishly moved towards the group of hostage Jurisfiction staff, handing the book over to one of them.

"I... you..." Sarah seemed to be grasping helplessly at thoughts in her mind as she stood there, gaping. She seemed to have run out of energy and surety, and was standing there, staring at him.

Then she recovered and joined Toby talking to the Jurisfiction members. The Cat was settling himself back down at his desk. Sarah was apologising to them, because Toby had come all this way for her, really. Because she'd confessed to him about why she'd never dated. Why she'd never kissed anyone.

And the world was surreal, worse than it had ever felt with the Mary Sues, or in the limbo without narrative. His chest felt warm and painful, and he felt a sweet tingling in his chest that reminded him, somehow, of vomiting, though as a fictional character he'd never felt that way before.

His heart felt weak, and his legs nonexistent. His head was light, and he wanted to scream or hit something or just run, run, and run. Time stretched out, and he felt feverish.

Sarah was standing beside him, and Toby was apologising, and she was scolding him, and saying "It's time to go home now." And they were leaving and it was now, NOW was the time to be bold, or romantic, of all the times he'd seduced and been seduced by those awful synthetic beings, all the times he'd been suave and witty, _now_ was the only time it mattered.

But it was horrifying, and he could only stand there and watch as they apologised and thanked the Jurisfiction staff, and waved goodbye to the Cheshire Cat and promised to come again, next time with some of the good stuff. Oh yes.

And they were walking away, towards the exit. Jareth's soul felt like it was being stretched thin, as if it was dwindling like their figures, into the distance of reality.

And then they were standing still, and turning, and Sarah's voice broke through the fuzz that consumed his mind.

"Oh come on, Toby, look. He doesn't want to come with us, like I said. If I had a whole world of possibilities, if I could know all those characters, all those people, I wouldn't chose to run after me, a boring, mundane librarian. I'll be okay, really I can't take him away from here. Look, it's breaking his heart."

Toby looked at him, met Jareth right in the eyes, and turned back to look up at Sarah.

"You are both idiots, you know. Complete idiots."

Toby stalked over, grabbed Jareth roughly by the hand, and dragged him along until they stood beside Sarah at the door to the Library.

Toby pushed their hands together, and left through the doors. They stood there, feeling a bit confused, until Jareth spoke. The words felt drawn from his mouth.

"I can't believe that you're real, and really here!"

She laughed, and was a little bit closer all of a sudden, their shoulders touching. She dropped her head, and watching their hands, intertwined their fingers.

"I can't either, believe that you're real."

He laughed, and squeezed her hand in his, feeling her slender fingers clasped between his own.

"I'm not, not really."

"Oh." They stared at the doors for a moment in silence.

"Well, I suppose I can live with that. Come on, we'll be late for dinner, and we have to get you changed out of that period costume. We're meant to be visiting Toby and Dad, cos Karen's away for the weekend. I promised to bring pizza."

"Okay."

And they stepped through the doors, and out from the narrative to reality.


	3. In any other world We're all mad here

_Author's Note: Written for the May 2008 prompts at Only_Forever LJ. Also posted in 2008 at Underground, a Labyrinth fic archive._

**In Any Other World (We're All Mad Here)**

Sarah stretched and felt her back slide against the sheets of her bed. Somehow, after all these years, it was still "her" bed. Never "his", never "theirs", but hers. Some strange thought process, tied into an as-yet uncovered part of her subconscious psyche.

She contemplated being lazy, and just rolling over again. It was warm and sunny, and Uncle Toby was willing enough to babysit. She didn't _have_ to get up.

But she did, in the end. Because it felt a little weird, to lie there and feel her brain think about "her" bed.

She felt like Sophie, in the moving castle, the first time she had walked down the hallways here. It was like the moving castle, really. A big, wonderful facade outside. But most of it was smoke and mirrors. Scaffolding and the mechanical winches that moved the walls about when guests weren't looking. What they had, more or less, was the living room, converted from the throne room; the bedroom; the kitchen and laundry; the bathroom; the four other bedrooms that currently housed Toby, Sally, and Jack.

Jareth had argued with her, about that. He'd said that the heirs to the goblin kingdom needed exciting, flourishable names. She'd looked at him, and then gone back to stirring their porridge.

"I'll give them flourishable names when your goblins grow enough real vegetables to make our food taste a little less like imported wheat goop."

He didn't get around to _that_ job until the kids were old enough to refuse to eat, by which point their names had stuck. Sarah felt like she'd done a damn good job about it, too. In a world as ethereal and inconstant as this one, they needed solid and heavily real names to keep themselves grounded.

When she entered the kitchen, and sat down at the table, Sally brought her a cup of tea. Toby smiled happily, and Jack crossed his arms at his plate.

"Come on, Jack, don't you like what your Uncle Toby makes?" Toby looked like he was getting desperate. Sarah would have checked the time, but it would be all the same, really. Late enough, given Toby's frustration.

She sipped her tea for a few moments, letting Sally snuggle up beside her, running her free hand absently through her daughter's soft hair. The children's hair hadn't grown out of baby-fluff into blonde, or brown, or even any other real colour. It was, at best, mouse-y. Frizzy and straight and always at odds with itself. Sarah liked it much more than her own hair, or that of normal human children, unless it was her turn to wash it. So dull and grey-brown, yet so inescapably alive and charged with energy.

But as the tea cleared her mind of sleep, and she could focus on her thoughts, she shifted a little, and, without even thinking, slipped into the flow of the morning. Toby wasn't to know, he'd never had children of his own.

"Jack, if you eat your breakfast, all of it, and be good about it, _and _take your plate to the sink, then Uncle Toby might just reach into his pocket and find something."

"What something?"

Toby flustered, and suggested, optimistically, "A candy?"

But Jack, for all of his five years, was very mercenary.

"No. That's not worth a whole meal. I want something better. I want... um... um... a... no, a..."

Sarah watched as Sally climbed into her father's lap and started pretending to eat his food. She pushed the porridge around a little, and carefully, deliberately, began to stir in small chunks of Toby's forgotten eggs.

Jareth was too busy laughing at her brother being had by Jack, so she wouldn't move the bowl, or tell him. He deserved it.

"...oh, and one of those things. A Gameboy, yeah? A gameboy, with ALL the games!"

Sarah decided that she'd had enough of the morning.

"Jack, eat your food. If you don't eat it, you _know _what will happen. When we're sitting down at our picnic with our sandwiches, and cake, you will only be able to eat your leftovers. Until they're all gone, and you feel too sick to eat cake. You should eat most of it now instead, because you know your father and I will let you get away with it now. And, in less than four hours, you will have cake."

Jack stared at his plate, thinking about it. Toby turned back to his plate, gratefully, only to realise that most of his food was missing.

Jareth kissed his daughter on the very top of her head, and began to eat.

Sally, smart girl, had disappeared somewhere under the table as Jareth had reached for his spoon. If Sarah had been completely awake, she would have tried to find the girl, or at least help clean Toby up when the bowl of porridge-egg-toast mix was upended into his lap, but instead she let her eyes hang droopily and her hand laconically reach out for her mug again.

As Jareth raged about, stomping around like Godzilla, pretending to be mad, growling in anger, but laughing all the time, and as Sally and Jack squealed and giggled and ran around with him, Sarah felt a strange warmth in her chest.

She'd have to clean up the awful mess later, she knew. Porridge everywhere, and egg. But it seemed so wonderfully perfect right at that moment.

Toby placed a warm, conciliatory hand on her shoulder, and placed Jareth's bowl back on the table with his free hand.

"You know, Sarah, I'm glad that you're happy, but you are aware that you, he, and they, are all insane? Utterly and completely insane?"

"Maybe," She smiled back. But what was sanity, in an incredibly small, mundane world pulled together out of huge sweeping landscapes and logical impossibilities?

"But, Toby, in any other world, you could tell."

He snorted, shrugged, and shook his head.

"I still think you're all completely mad."


	4. Once upon a time began a tale

_Disclaimer: All characters contained within this story are not the intellectual property of the author, but of their respective legal holders. This work is not allowed to be copied without the author's permission, has no trade value, and will never be sold. _

_Author's Note: Originally posted as a response to a community challenge prompt at .com/only_ in 2008._

**Said the Storyteller**

"Once upon a time began a tale," Said the Storyteller.

"Pah!" Said the dog. He pawed the ground, disconsolate. "Enough of your stories! They're always about old people, same old. One about Sapsorrow and her dresses... another about that True Bride, and hers..."

The Storyteller tutted at him. The dog felt he should stop, but somehow his words fell over themselves to push out of his mouth. He felt a great dread rise deep in his gut. There would be little, if any, tasty food tonight.

"And those men," The dog felt his tonuge stumble on, tripping on the words, "th-those men, always questing about. For once, I'd like a story that didn't end in victory, or happiness, or true romance!"

The Storyteller raised a bushy old eyebrow, and took a deep, calming breath in. He let a long, slow, breath out.

"Fine. I don't want to argue tonight. We don't have the audience of listeners that we used to have, anyway. Oh, what's a Storyteller with nobody to tell a story to?"

The old man shifted in his chair, his knees creaking almost as much as its' wooden legs did. He pulled it closer to the low fire, and set his feet resolutely down with two heavy thuds before it, stretching his sore, sock-covered toes out towards the warmth.

The dog shuffled along, and sniffed around the room. Still no food, and just as boring. The Storyteller dozed off.

"Oi!" The dog protested, snuffling around his feet. The old man couldn't fall asleep. It was dark and cold, and there was a fire. Maybe there would be soup, later. You couldn't have a cold, dark night by a fire – especially when there might be a soup or a stew – without a story.

"Oh? Oh. Yes." The Storyteller stared glumly into the fire. The stones felt silent, and empty. His voice didn't echo out into the world like it used to. And they never had visitors, anymore.

And, like the dog had said, after a while, all of the stories were, more or less, the same.

The dog was headbutting his leg, now. The Storyteller turned his head to look into those small, beady eyes.

"I listen," The dog began. He let his voice trail off into the dark night. He shifted closer to the warmer stones beside the fire.

"Ah. Well, then," The Storyteller began, "You want a tale where there is no real happy ending. Or, at least, no True Romance, or Fated Love. No princes, or lords, or wars, or victories. Hmm."

The dog waited patiently for quite some time.

"Hmm," The Storyteller said again. It was harsher, louder, gaining confidence. The dog could feel a good tale coming on, as if it was vibrating the very stones that their home was built with.

"Well, then," The Storyteller began, "Once upon a time, there was a young girl. She thought, as young girls often do, much more of herself than she was. She had a stepmother,"

The dog groaned. Because oh, did he know where this one was going. A nudge in his side from the Storyteller's foot shut him up, though. He knew the dog would behave himself, for a story.

"who often had her care for her young half-brother. In this land, it was quite common for children to be useful, which is a change from a lot of our other stories. But the girl felt beset upon, and began to whisper in her brother's ear, about the hordes of goblins that would take him away, if she wished it..."

The dog whuffled the Storyteller's toes, socks and all, appreciatively. The shadows cast by the low flickering fire began to cackle and whisper and dance. Goblins were always fun, the dog remembered.

The Storyteller's voice became surer and stronger as he spoke. He began to gesticulate, and move with energy. He stood from his chair, and slipped his feet into a pair of boots. The dog rose. They would be moving about, walking, seeing things happen soon.

Like any good story, it would take them away from their small cold room and into a world of unimaginable wonders. This time, into a world where there was no True Love, and no sure victory.

The dog shivered with excitement, and loped beside his master. The Storyteller smiled, winked out at the audience, who seemed suddenly much closer and more real than before, and took as wide a step as he could. He needed it, to bridge the gap between his stone floor and a very different stone floor.

The dog didn't even pay attention to the words anymore, he just watched the girl run about in the Labyrinth, and sniffed all the exciting new scents. This was it, just like the good old days.

This was how you _really_ told a story, proper.


End file.
